Which led to people like me making a fool out of themselves. Always been using Android, and listened to iPhone users singing the praise of the amazing UI and UX of iOS. Well, eventually iPhone 12 Mini released so I figured, "why not give it a try, can't be worse than my current Motorola Moto G gen4 right?"
Well, it is worse. I still have the phone because it still works, but that was my first and last iPhone. Everything is dog slow, not because poor performance but because of slow animations. Same on Android by default, but at least I can speed it up. And the UX makes you jump through hoops, things are impossible to discover unless you watch tutorials on YouTube, and the amount of UI bugs seems sky-high for something that sells itself as "Premium".
And then CarPlay is just an abomination! Even the most basic things like "I'd like to answer a call while still being able to see the map I use for navigation" seems to be completely ignored and it honestly doesn't make any sense at all.
Ugh, I almost look forward to accidentally dropping the phone so I can go back to having a non-distracting experience in the car again.
Edit: I just remembered the most egregious issue: How can I see the current year without having to open up a separate calendar application/put a huge widget on my home screen?
My last Android phone made me watch about a dozen youtube videos to discover how to configure it... It's not an Apple thing anymore.
Today, it is more about maintaining your suite of apps, the Cloud with all your data, the little blue bubbles in your group chats, and a host of other issues that are more a priority for choosing one platform over another, for most people. If I were to switch to Android now, it would be a huge PIA considering the 10+ years of platform integration and thousands of dollars of app purchases, iCloud, etc, that has made up a significant part of my digital life. I'm sure it would be similar for people going in reverse. Apple knows this, hence why services have become an essential part of their business.
Did you try Accessibility > Motion > Off?
>Things are impossible to discover unless you watch tutorials on YouTube
There's a pretty useful manual built into the device itself called Hints I think? Did you read that?
It’s not a “it’s not iOS” thing, either. There are certain desktop Linux setups for example that don’t bother me nearly as much. It’s just Android that feels “wrong”.
If only the entire front end of Android were interchangeable like Linux DEs are.
I totally agree that this is terrible. But this kind of behavior always makes me wonder if this is a "passive aggressive safety" thing. I have a 2019 Subaru Impreza, and I can't change the time on the clock unless I'm in park. I tried it at a red light once because I got sick of seeing the wrong time after DST and I thought something was messed up, but it turns out it was because I was in drive. I'm fully capable of changing the time at a red light without causing an 8 car pile-up, just like you're fully capable of talking on the phone and following directions while driving. Regardless of whether it's a bad UX thing or a misguided attempt at safety thing, it's still super annoying.
I always had flagship Androids before my switch to a 12 mini. Overall I am happy. There are plenty of things that annoy me lots but I never really noticed slowness.
Where do you notice it? Do you play games or use compute intensive apps?
And then people still expect to connect their phones to the car, for calls/reading texts etc, so you still have to support that in some way... and people will expect that to play nice with the audio playback features (calls pause/unpause music, etc)
Since we're already supporting a phone connection, then it just makes life easier to bring your own experience. The auto maker supplies the interface, you bring your own apps, data plan, etc via carplay/android auto.
Personally, I find it's a huge step forward to whatever OEMs make in house which aren't updated/obsolete in a few years.
There is no "Motion > Off" but there is a "Reduce Motion" toggle. Seems to be turning things that were slowly animated into even slower fade, like when you switch applications. Doesn't seem to actually affect much, animations inside for example Apple applications is still there, no matter if that toggle is on or off.
> There's a pretty useful manual built into the device itself called Hints I think? Did you read that?
I've browsed through it, but I don't think it's in no way extensive? I tried to find anything documenting the "Hold on spacebar and drag to move text cursor" in the Tips application (that I'm guessing you're referring to?) and found nothing, which is one of the features I "discovered" purely by accident.
But CarPlay is 100x worse than Android Auto, even though Apple is supposed to excel at UI and UX, this was the point I was trying to make, not that car makers such at UI/UX.
And I had budget Android phones (Motorola Moto G) before my 12 mini, yet the iPhone is worse on most points besides the display and sound.
> Where do you notice it? Do you play games or use compute intensive apps?
Anywhere where there is an animation/sliding/transition. Everything feels like it's moving in molasses.
But it's very much not a Apple-specific issue, designers nowadays seems to make animations in general way too slow. Which is fine when it can be configured (like on Android) but Apple doesn't like customization (or used to at least), so we can't.
> There's a pretty useful manual built into the device itself called Hints I think? Did you read that?
I posit that if one needs to load up the Tips app to figure out how to perform desired functions, that's a problem with the UX and not the human trying to use the device/app.
The ideas espoused in The Design of Everyday Things[0] pops into mind right now.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expand...
I'm 99% sure no one of the designers who created those UX flows have ever actually used CarPlay in real life, like the users do. It's really hard for me to imagine a designer coming up with an appropriate reason for blocking the map view because you answered a call.
Enabling the power user/developer menu in Android's settings lets me disable animations entirely. My old phone feel really snappy now and I'd do the same on a new phone too.
A couple years ago I was gonna get a new phone and, half my family being Apple devotees, I was considering switching again so I could stop hearing the 'blue bubble' nagging, plus they seem to genuinely enjoy their phone.
In pure luck, a friend had a new iPhone 13 and hadn't switched from his old phone yet, and allowed me to use it for a couple days so I could see just how incredible the phones are and I should switch. After about 48 hrs, I was so done with the product, and like you, preferred to switch back to my old 'crummy' phone until I bought my next flagship.
I can't imagine being locked in till it dies, because as you said, the iPhone is such a miserable product. I'm sure you could resell and get a flagship for a similar price. You'd still net loss, but IMO it would be better than keeping the phone since you don't like it.
I do not observe this on my 12 Mini that is on iOS 16. Comparing it to my Pixel 6a with stock Android 14, I’d say the iPhone is faster/smoother and less glitchy moving around the UI.
Perhaps something is up with your 12? That would still be a ding on Apple.
The past 10 years or so? Everything has gone out of the window. No one is left at Apple who cares.
Anything on top of that would just be extras, but something basic like that should work at least. Which it does on Android Auto, but not on CarPlay.
I remember watching those "what's a computer?" ads and laughing out loud. Yeah, what is a computer? We've gone so long watching YouTube ads and Music.ly sponsored content that half of us don't even know what one is. Are we even still connected, when companies like Apple mediate how we're allowed to communicate with each other and share ideas? Apple's design for a bicycle for the mind has been repurposed into a flywheel for cash generation. I don't meet a single person "riding" their iPhone anywhere more important than Pornhub or Instagram.
> 12 Mini that is on iOS 16. Comparing it to my Pixel 6a with stock Android 14
Enable the Developer/Debug menu on your Android phone, turn off animations inside that menu then compare the "snappiness" between the two. While the iPhone puts animations/transitions/fades between everything, the Android will immediately "jump" to what you wanted, without animations. If you try this out, I'm sure you'll notice what I mean.
This is what I want on my phone too, or at least 100x faster animations.
Worth noting that while this used to be true, those things are now/soon geofenced features that only Europeans get to enjoy. Too bad if you happen to live in the home country of Apple.
I'm not locked to it but honestly I spend so little time on my phone that it's one of the smaller problems in my life. I do despise it, but not enough to sell it before I can't use it anymore.
Yes I'm bitter about the Jetbrains New UI abomination.
Expand the Table of Contents + at the top to see all the sections.
(Like others, not defending the state of things, just trying to help.)
0: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/type-with-the-onscree...
edit: if you want it in an offline format, you can find it in the Apple Books app by searching iPhone User Guide.
The sequence of events was:
Lightroom Legacy needs photos imported because the new Lightroom (cloud/subscription version I believe) has a different workflow, interface and apparently, features, so he's using both for the time being.
So he follows guides on Adobe to import from iPhoto through a plugin.
I had to learn after much google-fu that iPhoto has been replaced by the new Photo app. No compatible libraries found, says the unhelpful error message.
No way to import his Photos library into it without first exporting all photos into a separate folder and importing that one into Lightroom Legacy. Why there is no compatibility shim/layer for that functionality I will never understand...
He refuses to export and reimport all his photos because he has A LOT of them. He does photography as a hobby primarily, but has been using his iPad and iPhone for a while without a Mac PC and was astonished at not being able to do such a simple process.
Part of my troubleshooting involved looking for a potential directory where the Photos app stored the files. It's some sort of package file that creates what seems to be the equivalent of a virtual directory. So I search for the Mac Drive icon... that took me to google, to then Finder, settings, and enable showing the drive. Why the hell does Apple hide the frigging storage device?!!! (I know why... but it's maddening)
One more reason to never want to use or support any Apple product in the future.
It turns out most people are not bothered by this. Somehow they are still slower than those animations.
On of my biggest suffering in life.
Great that it is mentioned somewhere, in some manner, I guess.
No, you cannot (mentioned here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41409580). Makes it even worse in the cases I tested actually.
> As a rule a flagship iPhone is at least 30% faster than flagship Android (by which I basically mean Samsung Galaxy) on realistic workloads.
That's cool, but not what I'm talking about. Even my Motorola Moto G4 (released in 2016) allowed me to turn off the animations, so even that one "appears" faster than my iPhone 12 Mini only because iOS forces you to wait for animations to finish.
Yes, I can, and currently have to, but absolutely 0 times I've answered a call in the car and want the Phone app to cover the entire screen, no matter what I had there before.
It's just extra dangerous when I'm using maps, as maybe I have a turn I have to make in that exact moment, and having to go back to the maps just because some designer at Apple want to showcase their contact/name/phone number layout in the Phone app sounds like asking for trouble.
I'm not a fan of Apple for many reasons and I agree with your overall sentiment (though not with the same voracity), but I'm really curious how _this_ is the most egregious issue for you. The calendar year changes so infrequently, why would you need it featured so prominently?
It's funny that I'm the complete opposite. I was fine with Android, switched to iPhone (as mentioned upthread) and everything feels off, like no one cared about the UI and UX, and bugs galore everywhere. If someone handed me my iPhone 12 Mini today I'd say they're running a beta version of iOS on it.
Maybe it's just a "get used to" thing as we're surely not the only ones having very opposite feelings about this. I've now had my iPhone for 4 years it seems, but I still feel like the OS is beta-level quality, should have gotten used to it by now...
Because it's so basic. Add a switch that lets me decide how I want the date to be displayed on the lockscreen/notifications centre.
> why would you need it featured so prominently?
It doesn't need to be more prominently than where the date is right now, I just want the current year next to it as well.
I know from first sources that it is true. The car dash design is completed independently of the UX/UI work.
And the designers/programmers never test it in the car. There is almost no iteration there. In fact the people I talked to worked remotes. They couldn't even try to get into a prototype car if they wanted.
You can. There's a new JIT entitlement for web browsers in Europe. It's still limited to _only_ browsers, so emulators are out of luck.
Apple’s approach has also been to allow export of that data into standard interoperable formats (be it music, photos, emails, contacts, calendars, etc.).
And FWIW, the photos are in “~/Pictures/Photos Library” - that must have been very difficult to find.
[1] it had two pieces of metadata, content type and creator, for files in Mac OSes prior to OS X, when it regressed to the windows/Unix way of handling things with inelegant file extensions.
That’s funny. I have virtually no ads on my Apple devices. I associate ads with Windows and Android.
And I have several browsers on my iPad, one reason being avoiding ads.
the unfortunate reality of touch screens is that there are no affordances for things that can't be seen. design of everyday things goes over stuff like never put a pull handle on a push door kinda things. i think having to go to an app for some things is somewhat reasonable given the ui size constraints and only having so much touchable area... most of the functionality is there and self evident without an app.
The thing is, it is very easy in comparison to offer this cross device functionality, if you lock in your users and can simply make lots of assumptions about what software the user will be using. How much of that cross platform stuff works for non-standard browser or non-standard messenger?
Bugs aside, it feels like touches more “directly” control iOS whereas with Android it’s like interactions are all passing through an additional layer, leading to an impression of disconnectedness. It’s not entirely unlike the phenomenon that used to be observable on some Linux desktops a decade+ ago when computers were weaker and you could “feel” the layering of X11, GTK, your compositor, DE, etc all kind of slip-sliding and not acting fully in concert, where Windows and OS X usually didn’t give this impression.
Back in jailbreak days there was a global animation timer hack you could do — changing the animations to take zero seconds — so they would all just be skipped. It made the phone so fast.
(“Reduce Motion” is useless for this because yeah, the fades are just as slow.)
Also I don't think "just" is the word to use here. Slow is slow, and when it's on purpose it's harder to avoid.
Virtually. It's great when you log into iCloud and only have to deal with the App Store's "Suggested Content" and the Google suggested results in Spotlight Search and the misery of the default YouTube client running 30s midroll ads. Then you can make the little storage nag go away with a convenient $2.99/month payment addressable to Apple Inc. Oh, you wanted sideloading? That's to the tune of $99/year... can't pass off the SDK for free, can you? We'll assume you ignore Apple Music, although it will certainly nag you to try it.
For cloud storage and basic sideloading capabilities, Apple will charge you $11.24/month for basic features of the phone you bought and still treat you like garbage. The premium brand-halo surrounding their products is the well-documented Reality Distortion Effect - you are being fooled into defending nonsense because you think this grifting benefits you. To be clear, I think Android and Windows both suffer from similar problems, but their users aren't fooled because it's explicit. Apple uniquely abuses their position as OEM, and the problem literally extends to them advertising to their users and convincing them it's harmless when Apple does it. If you don't understand it by now, just read the affidavit once the FTC wraps up their case.
> And I have several browsers on my iPad, one reason being avoiding ads.
You have one browser, with multiple interfaces. When Apple serves you boot, your browsers have no choice but to lick.
The Photos library on the Mac was not accessible via Lightroom Legacy. He (& I) could not locate it through the "Browse" functionality within the application. I think I could open the photos through finder, but could not import them through Lightroom Legacy. I could, however, Open With: from the Photos app, which then imports into the application just fine. This irked him enough to not want to do it, and I explained that it was the only way to do so, or otherwise export and import the desired photos in bulk.
I see what you're saying, but Apple's approach was clearly not intuitive for me, nor the Mac user. It's what it is, but Apple needs to facilitate working with their virtual folders/libraries natively through applications, not force users to resort to using workarounds... to export into interoperable formats for applications that run natively on their OS. Either Adobe is screwy or Apple is screwy here, but I'm leaning on Apple so far.
But the general idea of things being slowed down by animations is objective. It could be done in a frame or two, it takes X frames. And you can add up those delays when you're navigating and reach significant numbers.
On iOS you install a variety of shady ad blocking browsers because the Safari system of extensions doesn't really let the ad blocker extensions block what is needed. You are also trapped in Safari, which is not a good browser, just something that prevents Chrome from ruining everything.
Apple perfected optimizing for the 80/20 split, where 80% of users will experience very little friction, and the other 20% can go pound sand. And that was obviously a clever marketing decision up to a point.
And that's of course worse in countries with two calendars.
Some things don't get stuck in my memory, like the current year or my own age. My own age is easy to calculate as long as I know the current year, but the current year isn't always easy to remember for some reason, especially the first 6 months of each year. Most of the time I just have to think for 10-15 seconds to remember it though, so isn't the end of the world exactly.
And no, my memory is generally fine, it's just some "sometimes changing" numbers that just don't get persisted correctly, or they're stored correctly but my retrieval microservice is too janky to retrieve stuff fast enough.
Well, for some people, they know exactly what date it is, and what week number it is, does that mean we shouldn't show that either, because it's such a basic knowledge to know for some?
I'd prefer to accept that different people remember different details, that's why we let our personal computing devices be customizable, because not everyone is the same.
In the Kernigan and Plauger Software Tools book that describes the Unix user space you could use tools like wc, awk, sort, uniq, and grep, bound together with the shell, to do all kinds of things on plain text files.
As a photographer of course I want to share images between Lightroom Classic and DxO and as a computer graphics “artist” (I almost want to say “technician”) I want to work with images in Photoshop, web editors, tools I write to create images, etc.
Shouldn’t I be able to make music with GarageBand and then listen to it in iTunes and then write a program that plays it through my smart speakers at sunrise to wake me up?
Office 95 revolved around COM which meant that a Microsoft Word file was a composite file that could also contain data from other programs like PowerPoint and Excel so I could embed a small spreadsheet in a word document. (The fact that this system was documented and open was a weakness as much as a strength because you never knew if the recipient of a file had all the applications to open it)
Currently Office uses a documented XML and ZIP based file format. It is easy-peasey to load data in Excel format into pandas to do data analysis (less error prone than CSV even.). It’s not hard to write a program in PHP or Java that makes an Excel sheet complete with formulas for somebody to fill in then have them upload it back to a web site and suck the data out.
Locked in data is one reason why the cloud and mobile age feels like a step backwards than forwards, never mind the possibility of losing your data because you couldn’t pay the bill or your vendor got bought by Google, etc.
And the cross-device stuff is based on cloudkit, so it’s easy for third parties to adopt and get those benefits using apple id rather than additional signins. Of course that has some lock in, which I recognize is so offensive to some people that the upsides aren’t worth it.